Brennan: NFL players need to get on board HGH testing

Dec. 12, 2012
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NFL football Hall of Famer Dick Butkus testified Wednesday on Capitol Hill before the House Oversight and Government Committee hearing on "HGH Testing in the NFL: Is the Science Ready?" / Evan Vucci, AP

by Christine Brennan, USA TODAY Sports

by Christine Brennan, USA TODAY Sports

One wonders what the National Football League Players Association is hiding. How many of its Sunday behemoths are cheating? How many of those bulging biceps were made in a test tube?

What other conclusion can we come to, when, 15 months after the NFL's new collective bargaining agreement allowed players to be tested for the abuse of human growth hormone, the test still isn't in place, due entirely to the foot-dragging of the NFLPA?

Another professional sport found itself in another Congressional hearing room Wednesday on Capitol Hill. Based on what we know about all the other Congressional hearings in sports history, this was not going to end well for the people trying to protect the prospective cheaters.

It didn't.

"They say they need more time to study this issue," Rep. Elijah Cummings (D.-Md.) said during the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing entitled, "HGH Testing in the NFL: Is the Science Ready?"

"To me, it seems obvious the players association is simply running out the clock," he said. "They are now trying to back out of the contract. â?¦ They have a contract, and they should honor it because when they refuse to do so, that sends exactly the wrong message to the kids we have sworn to protect. And that is when it becomes our business."

As Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa would be the first to tell you, it's never good to become the "business" of a member of Congress.

Then there was Dick Butkus, the Hall of Famer who started an organization called "I Play Clean" to help youngsters avoid performance-enhancing drugs.

"Let's get on with it," the Chicago Bears great said of NFL HGH testing. "The HGH testing process is proven to be reliable. It's time to send a clear message that performance-enhancing drugs have no place in sports, especially the NFL. ... The well-being of our nation's most active youth is riding on it and they're paying attention to what happens in the NFL."

One wonders if the NFLPA has been paying attention to what has been going on in the sports world the past 25 years. We're still mired in the Steroid Era. Some, perhaps many, players are cheating like crazy, and will be for decades to come because the bad chemists are way ahead of the good chemists. Young athletes, boys and girls, want to emulate their heroes in many ways. That can include taking PEDs. To try to catch the cheaters and send a strong message to the kids who worship them, sports leagues need to employ science's best, newest testing, which in the case of HGH is blood testing.

That is what the NFLPA ostensibly agreed to before the 2011 season, and that is what the NFLPA is stone-walling today. The union now says it wants a "population study" to see if factors such as a player's size and ethnicity would affect the accuracy of the HGH tests. A year ago, it was complaining that the blood tests were invasive, that the testing plan was being forced on the players and that no one could trust the World Anti-Doping Agency, a line it clearly stole from Lance Armstrong.

The NFLPA is also following the lead of the old Major League Baseball Players Association, which refused to allow drug testing of any kind for so long that it tainted the reputation of an entire generation of players.

"A big part of the history of drug testing is the number of patently absurd excuses that athletes always seem to come up with to try to get out of being tested," international doping expert Gary Wadler said.

When a players union halts drug testing in its tracks, as the NFLPA is doing now, it might believe it is serving the best interests of its members, but it is actually doing the opposite by potentially causing them great physical harm. Any NFL player taking copious amounts of illegal HGH is doing himself no favors for the future. It's the same for those taking steroids and PEDs. Any union that isn't worried about what these men will be dealing with physically in 15-20 years shouldn't even attempt to tell us it truly cares about them.

As Cummings said, the NFLPA is on the wrong side of the HGH testing issue until it changes its mind. If that doesn't happen soon, the next Congressional hearing will be happy to reiterate the point.